My Best Friend's Exorcism(56)

“I’ll borrow some of yours,” Margaret said.

Frisbees and seagulls floated through the air. Teachers were holding grass class out on the Lawn, and all the classroom windows were open.

“Oh, by the way,” Gretchen said, reaching into her bag. She pulled out a sealed envelope. “Father Morgan is using me as his delivery service again. I’m going to start charging.”

Glee hesitated then took the envelope, stacked her books, and marched off in the direction of the auditorium, taking the turn around the bell tower that led to chapel. Abby was surprised that Margaret wasn’t saying anything. What kind of note was a teacher sending a student that had to be sealed in an envelope?

“You know she’s doing vestry all the time,” Gretchen said, watching Glee go. “I feel bad for getting her involved. I think she’s spreading herself too thin.”

“You can never be too thin,” Margaret said, then pointed to something in her food diary. “Look, see last Monday? 20 Ce. I’m already cutting it in half. I hate all this water weight.”





Abby sat on her bed and opened Gretchen’s daybook. The first page was devoted to Andy’s phone number, written in bubbly blue digits, each letter in his name outlined in yellow highlighter: Andy Solomon. Abby turned the page. For a few pages it was Gretchen’s homework assignments written in different colored pens, back when they’d still had some of the same classes:

Intro to Program – basic shapes

English – poss. test

US History – think of topic for research paper

Ethics – do questions for Thurs news articles

German – read vocab

Biology – graph for friday

Geometry – pg 28, 32 #1–8 (I understand it!! Sort of?)

Bright splashes of color marked birthdays, school letting out early, volleyball games. Then the schedule stopped, the colors disappeared, and the next page was packed with cramped handwriting from top to bottom, curling back up the side, a tiny crazy monologue. The same with the next page, and the next. Abby tried to read it, but it was either nonsense about angels and demons or chains of random words.

Then the drawings began. At first they were between the words, but then they grew until they pushed the words off the page, were written on top of them, red scrawls of marker forming spirals and bars, pictures of crying sad faces, flowers dripping tears, funnels inside mouths, crude insects, bugs, worms, cockroaches, spiders.

Near the back, Abby found the pages that would get Gretchen a one-way ticket to Southern Pines if anyone ever saw them. The pages that read: Kill them all. I want to die. Kill me. Make it stop make it stop make it stop. Reading them made Abby’s breath come fast and shallow and high in her chest. It made her feel lightheaded. White scratches dotted her vision.

The next morning, she woke up to find her forehead almost solid with scabs, and the zits around her nose had filled with yellow pus. Abby used two Q-tips to squeeze them dry before she pancaked and powdered her face into uneven, lumpy order and went to school. The first thing she did when she got there was find Gretchen. It was time they had a talk.





Gretchen’s hand raced down the pages of her spiral notebook, answering the end-of-chapter German questions.

“I can help you,” Abby said, planting herself directly in front of Gretchen’s desk.

They were in Mrs. Erskine’s English room before the first bell. People were slowly drifting in, finding desks or frantically finishing the previous night’s homework, racing through the assigned reading.

Gretchen looked up, blinking. She glanced around to see who else was in the room.

“You’re not in this class,” she said. “Did you transfer?”

“No,” Abby said, relieved that Gretchen was at least talking to her. “I can help you with whatever is going on.”

Abby had been stressing all night over how to say this, but now it was going better than she thought.

Gretchen gave her a vague smile.

“What’s going on?” she asked, bemused and confused.

“I know you’re not happy,” Abby said, sitting down backward at the desk in front of Gretchen, arms on the back, being earnest. “Just talk to me. Tell me what happened. We’re still friends.”

Gretchen bent back over her German book.

“Of course we’re still friends,” she said. “Why else do you think I let you sit with us at lunch? I know Margaret’s being a giant pill, but that’s Margaret. Maybe when she loses some weight, she’ll be happier.”

Abby put a hand flat on Gretchen’s notebook, blocking her pen.

“Why are you doing that with Margaret?” she asked.

This time, Gretchen looked at her seriously.

“The same reason I got Glee into vestry,” she said. “Because it makes her happy. You’re so negative lately. I don’t know what happened between y’all, and I know it’s stressful, but it’ll work out, Abby. Actually, the person I worry about most is you. I want all my friends to be happy, and something’s definitely wrong with you. I didn’t want to say anything, but your skin is acting up again.”

Something nudged the side of Abby’s hand and she looked down to see that Gretchen’s right hand was still moving on the page, frantically scrawling jagged print across her notebook.